We’re all familiar with these terms. Sustainability reports, stakeholder engagement, social impact, community empowerment, and ESG ratings are all part of the language we regularly use corporate meetings.
We’re also likely very familiar with DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many companies, perhaps including our own, have been working to increase the visibility of various sustainability initiatives, including DEI programs, as part of their efforts to strengthen ESG performance and ratings. In the process, have we ever stopped to consider why ESG and DEI are so often mentioned in the same breath, as though they were two sides of the same coin?
ESG emerged from the investment world in the mid-2000s as a framework for external parties, primarily investors, to assess a company’s non-financial risks. The underlying question is: How well does this organization manage its risks? In this context, the organization is the subject.
DEI, meanwhile, grew out of human resources practices that emphasize a different set of questions: Who is in the room? How are they treated? And do their voices count? The primary focus, therefore, is not the company or the organization, but the people themselves.
Yet the latter is often overshadowed by the former. Once incorporated into sustainability reports, DEI can easily be reduced to numbers under the “S” (social) pillar, such as the percentage of women or people with disabilities. In the process, the substance of their voices and presence can be lost. To understand why this happens, it is useful to start by looking at the incentives.
POJK 51/2017 mandates sustainability reporting and designates the OJK and the public as its recipients. Effective January 1, 2027, the Sustainability Disclosure Standards (SPK), based on IFRS S1 and S2, will take effect. The draft amendments to POJK 51, which the OJK consulted on earlier this year, introduce two new requirements: mandatory independent verification and a formal climate transition plan. This is good news for the capital markets, as the quality and credibility of disclosures are expected to improve.
But the direction is also clear: risk analysis remains the primary focus.
Rating systems point in the same direction. The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) only lists stocks that have been rated by Morningstar Sustainalytics, while the IDX ESG Leaders Index screens companies based on ESG risk ratings and the absence of significant controversies. The incentive is straightforward: be visible and remain uncontroversial.
The awards ecosystem operates on a similar logic. Most awards evaluate reports or programs. Rarely do the criteria ask whether the people featured in those reports and programs are actually reached or meaningfully engaged.
This brings us to a simple question about communication practice: Are the stakeholders we talk about genuinely engaged through and reached by our communication, or are they merely objects of it?
Take the disability employment quota as an example. Law 8/2016 requires private companies to employ at least one percent of people with disabilities, and two percent for government agencies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and regionally-owned enterprises (ROEs). A company can report its compliance in a single line without explaining whether those employees can access internal announcements, participate in town hall meetings, or have a voice in shaping the policies written about them.
Meanwhile, data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) shows that only around 1.1 percent of people with disabilities work in the formal sector. This illustrates a real disparity.
Kikin Tarigan Sibero, a commissioner at the National Commission on Disabilities (KND), aptly summarized the issue: the business world needs to be more open to the potential of people with disabilities so that recruitment does not stop at merely fulfilling administrative requirements (July 2026). He also pointed to a barrier we rarely hear about from the corporate side: the lack of clear mapping of job types across regions and sectors that are suitable for different types of disabilities. Without such a reference, many companies may struggle to identify where and how they can create meaningful employment opportunities.
A coalition of disability organizations had advocated for years for the drafting of a disability law, ultimately succeeding with Law 8/2016. More recently, in June, a critique of the admissions process for students with disabilities clearly articulated the operational issue: involvement must begin at the planning stage and continue through evaluation, rather than being limited to the outreach phase.
We can also look at how DEI is practiced in other countries. In the United States, for example, only 131 companies publicly documented their DEI practices in the 2026 Corporate Equality Index, down from 377 the previous year. The Conference Board also noted a 68 percent decline in the use of the term “DEI” in corporate documents. The Human Rights Campaign interprets this as a retreat in transparency, rather than necessarily a retreat in policy. In Europe, the Omnibus I package, effective since March 2026, has sharply narrowed the scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Meanwhile, Asia is taking a different path. The majority of Japanese employers say they will continue their diversity initiatives, while Singapore has elevated its guidelines to the status of law.
This does not mean Indonesia will necessarily follow the same trajectory. It The opposite could happen: DEI could increasingly be implemented and communicated primarily to meet compliance requirements or secure favorable ESG ratings.
Inclusive communication is not merely an add-on to ESG, nor is it simply another component of a DEI program. If inclusion is to become a reality and an integral part of sustainability practices, there are several questions we should be asking our communications teams:
First, is our content available in the languages and registers of the people we are telling stories about, or is it accessible only in corporate language?
Second, do the people affected appear as speakers in their own right, or are they represented merely as statistics and photographs?
Third, are there channels for feedback after a sustainability report is published, or does our communication end with distribution?
Fourth, is our own DEI communication accessible to the people we are talking about?
Fifth, have the communities we are talking about ever seen the reports written about them?
The third question is perhaps the easiest to answer, yet it is rarely acted upon. One example worth considering is KND, which established the DITA 143 complaint channel, enabling people with disabilities to voice their concerns, report issues, and access employment information. As of November 2024, the channel had received 1,620 messages.
A state commission has established a feedback channel for the communities it serves. This demonstrates a commitment to ensuring that organizational communication is conducted in an inclusive manner.
Next year, the Sustainability Disclosure Standards (SPK) and independent third-party verification will become mandatory. The reports investors read will become more rigorous, more thoroughly verified, and more costly to produce.
The questions we need to ask ourselves now, as we prepare the budget, are simple: Will we ensure that these reports are available to the people they are about? And will we make sure those people have an opportunity to see, understand, and respond to what is written about them?*
Verlyana V. Hitipeuw
CEO & Chief Consultant, Kiroyan Partners
This article has been published in PR Indonesia magazine 119th edition issued on September 2026, page 84-85.
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